Tuesday, 11 October 2016

We read an article about a fleet of research waka which spent two years criss crossing the Pacific ocean, observing rubbish in the Pacific Ocean. They noticed that if they found rubbish in the ocean, it usually meant they were getting close to land. Because of this, we infer that most rubbish in the ocean comes from land.

We wondered if the rubbish in our playground might have a similar trend. We decided, before lunch on Wednesday last week, to go and find out.

We split the school into 12 sections on a map. Each. section had a group of scientist (us!) to make observations and inferences.

We put a red dot on the map wherever we found a piece of rubbish and collected all the rubbish.

After lunch we went back, and noted with a blue dot, any new rubbish found in our area. We also collected this rubbish. This is our map, showing where we found rubbish, both times.

We also classified the rubbish we found into types of rubbish and displayed this into this graph.

Our observations and inferences:

We observed that most of the red dot rubbish (rubbish found before lunch) was caught up in fences, around buildings and in bushes, especially tussock grass.

We think this might be because the wind has blown rubbish left on the ground by students into the bushes where it has been trapped. The spikes on the bushes help to trap the rubbish. Some children might hide their rubbish under buildings at lunchtimes. Some people might be throwing the rubbish over fences too. Rubbish gets blown from the field into the ditch and can’t be blown out again.

As you can see the rubbish is in different parts of the school but most of the rubbish is all around Darren's shed. I this is because people just think it is ok to throw the rubbish. But how do we get the rubbish out of there and clean it up because some people don't care about their era.

The areas that attract more rubbish are where people eat and near fences because the wind blows it into fences and tussocks where it can get trapped.

The rubbish we collected was round where most people eat. We found lots of the rubbish under buildings and in bushes. We think that some kids might have thrown their rubbish in the gaps of under buildings so that it is hidden. What we don't realise is that this is affecting the environment. The problem with our data is that we can't put all the red dot rubbish under the buildings on the map because it is black and hard to see the rubbish. So we had to put it close to the sides of the like outside the school in bushes round fences and other places like that. The wind is worse because more rubbish gets dropped every day and it if it gets spread it will be harder to collect.

Most of the Rubbish comes out of the little kids pockets when they are running.We have learned that the rubbish spreads around the areas where the kids play like the playground rubbish falls out of kids pocket and people put it on the ground. We need to stop littering! We can help this by not being so lazy and dropping it on the ground.

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE!

After we made these observations and inferences, we were left with questions as to why people in our school failed to put their rubbish in the bins! Why does so much end up back around the school after one break time? Maybe it is falling out of people's pockets? Perhaps it's the winds fault? Or maybe the students of Waimairi school are dropping it on purpose?

Since then, we have recorded how rubbish was dropped at morning tea and lunch. Basically, we spied on the school! We, as scientists, have completed an investigation into why rubbish is ending up on the ground. On Thursday the 18th of August, we went out at morning tea and lunchtime to make observations of you all, collecting data to find out how rubbish gets on the ground.

We split up into 12 groups. At morning tea we spread ourselves around the whole school to observe. At lunchtime we spread the 12 groups around the lunch eating areas and observed what happened to the rubbish.

We have made inferences from our observations and here is what we found:

MORNING TEA FINDINGS

At morning tea time, Waimairi school dropped 205 pieces of rubbish. That's 2 out of 5 people on average who dropped rubbish. 110 pieces of rubbish were dropped on purpose, which is more than half of the rubbish we observed being dropped. We also saw 46 pieces of rubbish dropped without the person realising that they had dropped it, often as they were walking.We also saw rubbish being dropped from pockets.

The places we found that rubbish had been dropped the most, were the Te Puna block, the walkway down to Ara Atu and the playground behind room 13. We think this might be because people playing in these areas may not understand why it is important to put rubbish in the bin. We also inferred that since there's big bushes at Ara Atu, people think they can hide their rubbish there.

Also, there is no rubbish bin in sight of the playground in these areas, so people lazily drop it instead. We think that most people do this because they think that they can hide it, or can get away with dropping it, even when they know it is wrong. And they do get away with it! Why don't people take a little walk over to the bin to put their rubbish where it belongs?

LUNCHTIME FINDINGS

At lunchtime, 219 pieces of rubbish were dropped throughout the school JUST during lunch eating time. That's 2 out of every 5 people in the school on average. that is a large amount of people to be dropping rubbish.

From what we saw, 79 pieces of rubbish were dropped on purpose, and 44 were left where people were eating.

Just like at morning tea time, we think that around the school most of the people drop the rubbish because there's not enough rubbish bins around. Although there are already some bins, there only a few, and sometimes not in the best places.

We also think that some children might not be able to reach the bins because we observed the bins are quite a bit taller than some junior children. Younger students also may not understand why it is bad to leave rubbish on the ground.

We could maybe get more and smaller bins to show others that bins are valued around the school but we think most of the kids already know about why we shouldn't drop rubbish - because it will cause lots of problems for the animals in our environment and make our school look messy.

We spotted some differences between Morning Tea and Lunchtime. At lunch-eating time, more pieces of rubbish were dropped than the whole of morning tea time, even though morning tea is longer than lunch eating time. We think that more rubbish was dropped at lunch because more food is eaten at lunchtime and there would be a bigger chance of rubbish flying out of their lunchboxes. Lunch food is also more likely to have wrappers. However we also inferred that people might deliberately litter so that they don’t get in trouble for walking to the bin - as we are not allowed to stand up during lunch eating time.

Under the classroom is also a common place to put rubbish. But the reason that people drop rubbish there is because they think no one will notice. But we did! But if you think that you get away with it, then you are wrong because we see rubbish everywhere, even in sneaky places where people will think you can't see it.

Overall, 424 pieces of rubbish were dropped in the 45 minutes we were observing that day. That’s almost one piece of rubbish per person. If nobody ever picks this rubbish up, then by the end of the week there would be 2120 pieces of rubbish floating around the school. Many people dropped their rubbish on purpose, but also accidentally, leaving it where they ate or hiding it.

We think if we all work together our school can be cleaner by just simply walking to the bin, because just doing a simple thing like that will help to make a big difference. But we also think that during lunch eating time we should be allowed to stand up to walk to the bin to put our rubbish in it. We will be discussing this with the teachers. This means people will be less likely to throw it in the bushes, under the buildings, leave it where they were eating or just throw it on the ground.

We also plan to write to the board of trustees to see if we can have more bins built permanently into the areas that we’ve observed to gather the most rubbish. We also need bins that are the right size for younger kids as well.

So what is the most important thing for you to remember from today? Do not drop rubbish on purpose. It’s pretty simple. Please walk the few metres to the bins, otherwise we will all be swimming in a pool of rubbish.

Tuesday, 20 September 2016

My speech is about selfies and how they are dangerous when people take them too far to impress their friends. I was learning how to structure my speech, for example, I started with a rhetorical question and I was using language devices. I was using imperatives by saying “imagine this” and I was using power of three by saying “annoying rude and dangerous”. It went really well because I learnt new language devices and what rhetorical questions were. It went well because I delivered my speech well and I used expression. Overall I think My writing is multistructural.

Do you ever notice people taking selfies in annoying, rude and dangerous places? Like when they are driving or in a fancy restaurant. I wouldn't dare to take a selfie in a fancy restaurant, when people are trying to socialise and have a good time with their friends, how rude. What about the roof of a very tall building, Dangerous. Sounds a bit over the top to be honest.

On the footpath! That annoys me so much, how they block the walkway. Did you know people have been seriously injured from taking selfies and walking into things, in front of cars, off cliffs and just doing stupid, dangerous stuff.

We need to stop this because this can cause other people to get angry, annoyed… And even result in your own death! People are trying too hard to impress their friends by taking selfies, and people are taking them in annoying, rude and dangerous places.

Are these selfies taking over the world? I mean, everyone is taking selfies now. And when people add all the different filters and different shades of blue and black trying to look perfect, it's just fake.

If people want to take a (natural) photo, without a filter they will probably still spend about 10 minutes just trying to get the perfect angle and lighting so they look good for their friends to see.

So you're walking down the street and you look out of the window, you say “that is a wonderful piece of art, I need to take a selfie in front of it” so you jump out of the car and 321 selfies taken. “Oh, it's not perfect” you complain. I need to take it again. So then we fast forward a few minutes. “ I finally take the perfect selfie”. How ridiculous is that! Get a life right.

Now the next thing I want to talk about, is that it isn't always selfies, but taking photos of food in fancy restaurants is also annoying. When everyone is talking, gossiping and socialising and you pull out your phone to take a photo of your food then you're not engaging with the people you're with. Then you post it to Instagram or Facebook and you make out as if your life is amazing and better than everyone else's.

Why do people do that? Do they really think I care about what they had for lunch? I don't!

Sometimes Selfies with lots of filters can be a sign of insecurity. For example. If you take a photo and you can see a pimple, lots of people will put a filter on it to try hide the pimple. And I know when you send me a selfie on snapchat of you with butterflies or flowers on your head I know it's not really what you look like! I don't think people need to add filters all the time.

I want you to know that some selfies are ok. But please don't be a try hard. You don't want to take them all the time because that is weird.

Tuesday, 24 May 2016

My dad's friend is driving to the farm. Meanwhile I'm tingling with fear, it's my first time on an overnight hunt. Driving, driving and more driving. Eventually after what had seemed like forever we finally get there. But this isn't a normal farm, this farm is all across hills and has steep cliffs.

So now all we need to do is find a flat surface so we can set up camp. But before we find a place to camp, we find a swine of pigs running into a bush, they must've already smelt us. They were about 50 feet below us because we are on a hill. So we get out of the car and set up the guns, then my dad tells me to cover my ears, next minute. Bang!

He told me that was to get them out of the bush but I think he just missed it. So we kept on watching them for half an hour. But then we decided to leave because we needed to find somewhere to place out tents.

Yes we have stopped! “Now, let's go hunting!” I shout. We are all walking on an open track with an enormous hill next to us. The grass is a buttery colour with a few trees and bushes. Then my dad says to me “get down, get down, be very quiet.”

I whisper to him “is it another pig?”

He answers “yes, over there”

I ask him if he can shoot it or is it too far away? He says he will give it a go. He prones. Looks at me and says, “cover your ears”. He slowly pulls the trigger back… BOOM! SMACK! He blew a hole in the pig!

But wait, the pig runs off into a bush. My dad says “dammit we wounded it”. Then we were looking for about 1 hour then my dad says “I think that is enough hunting for one day.”

We hop into the tents and next minute, I’m fast asleep. I wake up in the middle of the night. Then I hear this rrroooaaarrr, and another one. Rrroooaaarrr. I'm literally wetting my pants right now. Is the pig back? Then I wake up fully I'm now wide awake… But then I realise something, The roaring is my dad snoring! I am incredibly angry, but not that angry about getting scared for nothing, it was because I had to go back to sleep with him snoring in the same tent!

/…./…./…./…./…./…./…./…./…./…./…./…./…./…./…./…./…./…./….

Reflection

I'm was learning to change my simple sentences to complex sentences. It went really well because I didn't use any simple and easy sentences. For example: He prones, looks at me and says, “cover your ears”. He slowly pulls the trigger back… BOOM! SMACK! He blew a hole in the pig!

What are my next steps?

My next steps are to use punctuation in the right way. Also to use capital letters in the right places. I also need to stay in the same tense for the whole story.

Thursday, 14 April 2016

This term I have been learning to make Sounds that bring out the feeling out of our poems, writing, etc. I created a character description of my little brother and I made a soundscape to match it. My learning was connected with all of the people that learn instruments like guitar because I used guitar in my soundscape.

I achieved my learning goal by using lots of different elements of music. It all connected with my poem too. For example, in my character description of my brother I said that his chunky belly dangles over his waist line, so I used clapping because sound like something slapping on your legs. (Don't worry I'm not being mean he's only 2).

Overall my learning went pretty well because the sounds in the soundscape all matched and was in time with the beat.

His chunky belly dangles over his waistline. He can dunk a basketball in his little baby hoop. If he has done something wrong, like he wees on the floor, he would try to cover it up with a blanket or a cushion. He gets told that if he eats his dinner, his muscles will get big. He has an attitude which is usually all happy and funny, but if you put one foot in his bad side, he will raise his voice, charge at you like an elephant and worst of all… Try to beat you up.

But sometimes he can be a really funny and cute. And that is my little brother.

Wednesday, 30 March 2016

His chunky belly dangles over his waistline. He can dunk a basketball in his little baby hoop. If he has done something wrong, like he wees on the floor, he would try to cover it up with a blanket or a cushion. He gets told that if he eats his dinner, his muscles will get big. He has an attitude which is usually all happy and funny, but if you put one foot in his bad side, he will raise his voice, charge at you like an elephant and worst of all… Try to beat you up.

But sometimes he can be a really funny and cute. And that is my little brother.